


The Wanderers

by embolalia



Category: Mad Max Series (Movies)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, discussion of infanticide, discussion of rape/pregnancy/abortion, mention of miscarriage, sad broken road warriors, various adult activities
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-07
Updated: 2015-08-16
Packaged: 2018-04-03 05:48:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 16
Words: 13,215
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4089268
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/embolalia/pseuds/embolalia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Max has been trying not to wonder about Furiosa for fifty-three days when he comes upon her in the desert.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Max has never been the sort of man who counted days, but it’s day fifty-three since he left the Citadel when he catches sight of a half dozen plumes of dust shooting up on the other side of a rise.

The period he spent as a blood bag and the three days of escape that followed should just be notches on the list of things he doesn’t think about. Instead he pushes his car toward the dust because she or her people might need him. Anyway it’s more of a risk not to look – in the desert you have to know which enemies there are and in what numbers.

He’s roaring down the other side of the ridge before he even processes fully what he’s seen: five bikes chasing a sixth, the pursuit vehicles covered in porcupine-like spikes and the one in the lead like something the Vuvalini rode. Max’s car offers more protection than any of them have, and he takes out two of the spikers from behind in the time it takes them to turn and register his presence. Whoever’s in the front takes advantage of their distraction to shoot the third. A metal hand extends backward in their direction, firing even as she whips around a curve of the whisper of a road.

It’s her. Max finds himself grinning. They’re two to two now and one tries to peel away, to pass him back in the other direction. Max dodges a spear and shoots the man between the eyes. When he faces forward again, the only vehicle left standing is hers. Furiosa looks back over her shoulder long enough to meet his gaze and confirm that he’s no threat. There’s no engine grease on her face anymore, and all he sees are her wide eyes, serious with an edge of wildness as she stares him down. He gets a tiny nod of thanks for his trouble, but no acknowledgment that she needed it.

Then she’s on her way again, engine revving as she leaps forward down the track in the sand.

Max lets her go. There are guzzoline stores and water in the packs on the back of the spikers’ bikes. It takes him less than ten minutes to scavenge what he can use.

When he stops to take stock of any pursuit, the desert offers only silence and sky.

He tries not to wonder what she’s doing here.

He has been trying not to wonder for fifty-three days.

The glimpse of her feels like jolting awake from a dream. Like a dream itself, a mirage in the desert. As real as his sprog when she whimpers just behind his shoulder, calling for help.

The next thing Max is aware of is driving, his engine screaming as the sand streams back behind him.

Her tracks are still fresh enough to be followed, and after another few dunes she’s visible in the distance. The distance closes. Does it matter if he speeds or if she slows?

They rise and fall up and down the dunes, in tandem as the sky above turns mottled pink and red, purple and silver. Wind roars and she’s only a shadow curving in the distance, and something flutters in Max’s chest at this reality of having his freedom and her alongside him all at the same time.

He follows Furiosa toward the dusk.


	2. Chapter 2

They park in the lee of a bluff just as the sun sets completely, and Furiosa goes about building a fire as Max gets a weathered camp stove out of his car and sets water to heat. Overhead somewhere a crow cries out, and a shudder ripples through Furiosa’s shoulders.

They sit, sipping his weak tea and leaning toward the wispy flames of a brambly bush. It has nearly gone out before Max thinks to speak.

“They alright?”

She looks sideways at him with clear annoyance that he’s spoken. “Alive, anyway.”

It’s all they say that night, even as they share a bit of the food Furiosa’s carrying. It includes some greens, so she can’t have been on the road long. Her hair is freshly shorn, the silhouette of her head a clear line against the darkening sky. His path has wandered; she was headed straight away. Max watches her, sees the tension in Furiosa’s frame, the way she doesn’t relax enough to take her prosthetic arm off until they’re finally in the pitch black and getting ready to sleep.

He grunts as she heads for her bike, jerking his head toward the car. It’s as comfortable as things get out here, and you don’t wake up under a blanket of sand.

Max takes the driver’s seat, reclined as far as it’ll go anymore, and Furiosa curls up in the back. 

*

Even her whimpers are threatening, until he remembers where he is. Enough starlight filters in from outside that Max can see where he’s reaching as he stretches out his arm. He clears his throat once, twice, then manages her name. “Furiosa!”

When she doesn’t answer he grabs for her good hand.

Furiosa pulls back hard, levering herself against his grip so that even as she wakes she’s sitting up ready to fight. “Max,” she says, panting.

It turns out he’s been wondering for fifty-four days if anyone told her his name. Max fights the instinct to pull free. “A dream,” he mutters.

She nods but doesn’t let go. Max twists on his seat so he’s sitting up upright, their clasped hands resting between them. They sit for a while with the resonance of the gesture until Furiosa’s breathing calms.

“Why?” Max asks.

For a long time she doesn’t answer. Almost long enough to accept they’ll drive toward the horizon forever and he’ll never know.

“The Dag lost her baby ten days ago,” Furiosa finally says. Her voice has been sanded away by days of riding. “It couldn’t have lived.”

“She okay?” he asks in the silence, and feels the vibration of her nod through their hands. Furiosa’s grip is a match for his own.

“The women are running the Citadel now – the wives, and milkers, and Vuvalini. By Council. They called a meeting to talk about how we still needed to have babies to survive.” Her hand clenches on his involuntarily and Furiosa pulls away. There’s a soft noise as she rolls to lie facing the back of the seat. If he could see, her brand would be inches from his fingertips.

Max is left with more questions, but he says nothing, just reaches to run his fingers over his nearest weapon. Outside the world is a perfect sphere of black, the top half brilliant with stars, more than he could ever see as a child in the old, half-remembered world. He lies awake, trying to remember the stories.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He doesn’t need her, and he does.

The next day is a Bad Day. Sometimes there are triggers: a crow’s voice like a baby crying, the shadow of a curl on his hand, adrenaline connecting the wrong wires and scrambling his brain. This time it hits Max out of nowhere, and his hands are shaking and his heart is hammering and he can barely remember to stash the keys in his tire before he’s flat on his back, all of them standing over him begging for help.

Sometimes he wakes up miles from where it starts.

Sometimes he closes his eyes and welcomes death if it would bring them all some peace.

Somewhere she’s screaming his name: _Max! Max, we need you, come back to me._ She’s small and pale. There’s a darkness around her eyes. She’s been stolen.

Max folds in on himself, for a little while, slipping into the darkness with his wife beside him and their son sleeping in his crib, until it’s too perfect to endure.

Sometimes he wakes up near death from thirst.

Sometimes his voice is so hoarse he goes days without speaking.

This time she’s holding his hand. His awareness hones in on Furiosa with the dull roar of an ocean receding, the pounding of his blood fading in his ears.

“Here,” she says calmly, and slips her hand behind his head, raising him up enough for a swallow of water. Her prosthetic hand is holding the cup for him and Max has to struggle not to go under again at the sight of it approaching his face, like a tattoo gun, like a brand.

He closes his eyes and cool water splashes over his lips, soothes his parched tongue. All at once he’s back.

Max takes the flask from her, drinks long and slow. When he sits up she keeps her hand on the back of his neck until Max nods once and pulls away.

It’s mid-morning, and a barren plain stretches to the horizon. Furiosa checks both their vehicles over with a fond but perfunctory greeting, and they set out.

*

Max is never going anywhere, just making it to the next hill, the next minute. Driving with Furiosa feels like it must have a destination. Something will come of this.

*

They stop as night begins to fall. Max is relieved when Furiosa goes about the duties of setting up camp the same as she did the day before, with no mention of the morning.

It builds up in him, though. She will never, ever ask, but he might have said anything. She might know his secrets. She might not.

As they sit beside the fire, Max clears his throat.

Furiosa looks up abruptly, her eyes running a quick survey of their surroundings in case he’s alerting her to danger.

Max shakes his head to ease her mind. “This morning.” His voice is rough. He might have been screaming. “It happens like that sometimes.”

She nods, sympathetic but without pity. “I guessed.”

“I’ve lost a lot of people along the way.”

A spark flares in her eyes and he hears the unspoken words: _who hasn’t?_

“Some of them it was my job to protect.” Max finds the horizon with his eyes, the still-sharp edge where a mountain fights the sky and loses every time. “My wife. Our son.”

Furiosa is perfectly still, studying the fire. “It’s a bad world for babies,” she finally says.

It sounds like forgiveness, like his son’s death was inevitable. It is not the first time the words have offered themselves, but they unleash the same rage. “We all killed the world,” Max growls. “But what comes next?”

She draws back as if he’s slapped her. “Worry about your own fucking survival.” Furiosa drops her cup, stalks off past the shadow of her motorcycle and up the side of a dune.

*

When she comes back Furiosa doesn’t offer an apology, but her eyes are softer as she deftly lays out her guns on the passenger seat of his car. “It’s good out here,” she says without meeting his eyes. “No one needs you. A kind of freedom.”

Max settles himself in the driver’s seat for the night. He thinks they must need her, though he also trusts them to do well enough on their own. He himself doesn’t need her, and he does.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In this time and this place, mourning is an alternative to survival.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Note: trigger warning for discussion of killing of babies.

At the height of the next afternoon they come upon one of the desert’s surprises. Furiosa sees it first; Max watches as she reaches the top of a hill and stops abruptly, staring down in the closest thing to shock he’s witnessed from her. She’s not ducking for cover though, or reaching for her weapon. He parks a few feet shy of the rise and walks up to stand beside her.

Between them they ought to have seen everything the sands can offer up, but neither of them has witnessed anything like this.

A sandstorm has swept through this way recently, no more than a day earlier, and unearthed the outskirts of a town that must be somewhere in the distance, still under the sands. Perhaps beneath them right now.

Furiosa starts down the hill with a cautious glance to be sure he’ll follow. The storm was a scalpel, lifting up exactly the right layers of dust to unearth a dozen uneven rows of fallen headstones, with perfect skeletons laid out before each one.

 _Marla Daniels, Beloved Mother_. Max makes it to that first stone before he can’t read further. Other people’s grief, a wholly other way of life: in this time and this place, mourning is an alternative to survival.

Furiosa studies each in its turn.

He leaves to move his car and her bike closer, unwilling to have them out of sight, and when he finds her again she’s crouching at the foot of one of the graves, before the skeleton of a child. The bones are bird-like and fragile; the dates Max has seen are from long before the apocalypse.

“I killed my daughter,” Furiosa whispers.

If a breeze had blown Max wouldn’t have heard her. He rests a hand on her shoulder, leans heavily into the touch.

They stay like that a long time, until a shifting wind offers all of them solace. “Come on,” Max murmurs. “Let’s be away.”

 

*

 

That night her words flow freely, as Furiosa stares once again into the fire. “I was his wife, the first thousand days after they took me. I was whole and healthy. They left me alone until I bled. Then I had a girl. She was perfect. When she was two weeks old he struck a bargain with the Bullet Farmer for her, to be taken as his future wife in exchange for ammunition. I held a pillow over her face before they could come for her.”

She flinches as if she can feel him watching and Max moves to sit beside her, pressed against her right side at shoulder and hip and knee.

“Joe said I’d impressed him with my ruthlessness. The girl was nothing to him, a half tanker of water offered in her place. Me he gave to the Imperators, to train in their ways.” There’s a tremble in her voice and she drops to a whisper. “He was proud.”

He has no idea whether it’s comfort she wants, or catharsis, or judgment. Max turns and opens his arms as Furiosa falls into them. There are clouds obscuring the stars and he can’t tell if he’s crying. It is the closest he has been to another person in more days than he can count.

When Furiosa retreats, he takes her hand before she can reach to wipe her face. She meets his eyes.

“What did you call her?” Max asks. The child they saw this morning was Elena Rowan. If no baby ever earns a monument again, at least he can know this one.

Her lips quirk. “I was Furiosa because my mother begot me from a trader on the Fury Road. I called her Vault. I thought she’d be as strong as she had to be.” She arches an eyebrow but doesn’t press him.

“Sprog,” Max says softly.

Furiosa nods.

 

*

 

She sleeps in the lee of her bike that night, both of them too raw from the day’s intimacies to be any closer. And yet Max finds himself holding his breath in the night, waiting for her gentle sleeping sigh. _Redemption_. Neither of them stand any hope of finding it in the desert.

 


	5. Chapter 5

A town emerges out of the desert, this one living. There are sentries but Furiosa dips her fingers in grease and marks herself so they let her pass with nods of deference or respect. Max has a hand on a weapon at all times, waiting for her slightest cue for back-up. They make it into the center of the few dozen tattered buildings overshadowed by an old airplane hangar before she pulls over, parks and sidles up to his car.

“We can trade for food. Either they haven’t gotten word of what happened on the Fury Road or my rank still carries weight.”

They draw little attention as they enter the hangar. Inside it’s been converted to stalls and tables, a sort of marketplace. Max has been to places like this before but the sheer number of people leaves him unsettled, glancing over his shoulder at every turn. Furiosa relaxes slightly, and he thinks she must be used to this. Even if she wasn’t at home in the Citadel, she spent her life among the throngs of War Boys and Wretched.

Her breath shudders to his left and Max’s whole body jerks, alertness winding him even tighter.

Furiosa’s hand is raised, not quite outstretched, her eyes locked on something painted on the far wall in great, white letters. WHO KILLED THE WORLD? WHO WILL SAVE THE WORLD?

It means something to her but he doesn’t know what. As Max turns to ask Furiosa bursts into motion, flinging herself out of the building and racing down the road, onto her bike and out, away.

 _Max!_ a child’s voice begs in his ear, and he’s already following her.

She stops a few miles away, past the last of the look-outs. When she turns to Max her eyes are as wild as he’s ever seen her except for that one moment on the sands, her every hope torn away. He gets out of the car and crosses to her slowly as she stumbles off the bike.

“What is it?” he asks.

“I’ve been there before,” Furiosa whispers. “I’d forgotten.”

Max waits for a long breath.

“Eight years after Joe sent me to the Imperators I was part of a trading envoy. We were sent to get a girl, the same age my child would have been. She sat in the cab with me on the way back, singing to herself.” Her jaw is trembling between words and he knows how much it costs her to relive the visceral rage and fear of those days. “Those were Angharad’s people. Those were the words she used to convince the others.”

The child he couldn’t save is screaming for him in the distance, and maybe she’s Angharad, too. He carries her death.

With a heaving breath, Furiosa calls calm back to her face, stillness to her limbs. It is an ability Max can only try to emulate.

“Who will save the world?” She whispers to the horizon. “I never heard her say it, but she must have. It’s what Toast said, when they asked me if I would have a baby.”

It’s the question he’s waited to ask. His silence asks it.

“A couple of them had parents who were half-lives. Some of Joe’s children were born normal or close to it. It seems like any woman who can carry to term has a chance at a healthy baby, but if they’ve had one before it’s a better bet. It was Dag and Toast, and Dag still sad. I went and walked among the Wretched, worked beside a War Boy left with the pups, who would have been an Imperator and fought alongside me. I couldn’t—” A sharp shake of her head finishes the sentence.

“It’s a bad world for babies.” He echoes her words.

Furiosa turns, meeting his eyes. “And who will save it?” She stares into him, no longer calm but lost and afraid of losing even more in a way he understands through to his very bones.

Max holds out his hand. This is an echo too, and her clasp is just as halting, just as firm. He has no idea what they’re promising, but he believes they could save each other if the entire world were just the two of them.

They don’t turn back to the town, though they could have used the food stores. Max thinks of going back alone, but she would insist on coming at his side and he won’t force her into that.

That night he dreams of Angharad slipping from the pain of his bullet and falling to the ground, rolling to her death. Sometimes she’s crushed by the wheels. Sometimes she’s a glimpse in the mirror a second longer, her hand stretched after his rig and Joe bearing down behind her. Max wakes with a groan to the touch of Furiosa’s hand on his chest, the steady murmur of her voice before she lies back down.

In the morning their path turns, no longer headed straight away from the Citadel but circling, holding their distance, waiting for something to tip the balance.


	6. Chapter 6

Max sees the storm coming before Furiosa does. She’s a city girl, after all. But when he points, her face goes still and afraid because this isn’t something they can fight their way out of. It chills him through.

They’re two days out from the Citadel, on the edge of the canyons, and lucky by a certain standard because out in the open desert their vehicles would have even less chance of surviving. He catches a glimmer in his rearview mirror and wrenches his wheel toward the cliffs, unspooling the nitro that just might be enough.

There’s no time to talk, but they work in sync, wedging Furiosa’s bike against the side of a cliff and heaping enough sand and rocks around the tires that maybe it won’t be swept up in a tornado right away. The car is the thing, sheltered as best they can get it between windbreaks of rock. The sandstorm is screaming its approach, crackling and whipping dust into their eyes as they hurdle their way into the back of his car, crouching in the footwells with rounded backs, hunching away from the inevitable explosion of glass.

The whine of the storm sets Max’s heart racing. His whole body is shaking with the need to run as he slams the door and cuts off the worst of the sound.

There are thirty seconds of impossible quiet, and Max looks at Furiosa, mere inches away from him. Her hair has grown out into short, fair curls. Max wonders for a split second if the wives would recognize her like this, and thinks that must be what she wanted when she ran from them. Leave behind responsibility, demands, an identity she never chose.

“What?” Furiosa asks.

He grunts, and she raises her eyebrows.

“You’re staring at me.”

“They’ll be alright, if we die here.” It sounds worse than what he means. “They don’t need you, to survive.”

Furiosa only looks more grave. “Their children will.”

He thinks if they had a child it could be orphaned today, left alone in this terrible world. An image of their child fills his mind’s eye and all at once Max is shaking, grunting, desperate to get out of the car. She’s right, of course she’s right, this is no life for anyone at all. The hail starts then, its fevered ricochet harsh on the windows and roof.

“Hey!” Furiosa’s hand is clasped at the back of his head, her forehead pressed to his.

She’s real, she’s solid. A child is crying his name somewhere outside. Max cups the back of Furiosa’s neck. Her brand is raised against his fingers. He breathes her air. They are property, they are Vuvalini, they are Road Warriors. The last time he touched her here, she was dying too, and he was giving her his name. Now she gives it back to him, chanting over and over: “ _Max, Max, stay with me, the storm will be over soon enough_.”

Metal snarls in the distance as her bike is lifted up and crushed against a wall of rock.

In the whole desert they have found each other, twice. The storm is too loud for words.

“ _I’m here, Max_ ,” she whispers – screams? – so close to his lips that the words resound inside his mind. He opens his mouth to say goodbye and then he’s kissing her.

It has been years since he felt this. It has been his entire life. Sweet, golden heat lights his body into incandescence. If death is coming let it come in this moment, as Furiosa runs her fingers into his hair and bites his lip and they press closer, into each other.

A shockwave shatters the front window and they fold together in the shadow of the driver’s seat as sand whips in at them. Furiosa tugs at him, a reminder to get their goggles on, and their scarves, as if it will matter. They hold on for all they’re worth. It is the best way he has ever found to die.

 


	7. Chapter 7

Max comes back to consciousness with a groan. His bad leg is jammed at an awkward angle, his brace digging sharply into his thigh. The weight pinning him shifts and he gasps in relief, shoving back his goggles to find Furiosa grim as she takes stock of their circumstances.

When the windshield was shattered it let the storm in, and sand blankets the car’s interior. Furiosa untangles her legs from his and pulls herself onto the back seat, running her good hand over her head and neck to check for scrapes or injuries. After a moment she catches the question in his eyes and nods, then climbs up between the seats and out through the fragments of glass toward the clear blue sky.

It takes Max a little longer to get his legs under him and in working order, and by the time he follows Furiosa is standing mournfully over what’s left of her bike. It looks as though a giant fist slammed the bike against the mountain over and over, which is more or less the truth. She crouches to stroke the handlebars but doesn’t dwell on the bike, just starts stripping off parts that are still intact. Max turns back to the interceptor.

It takes them the better part of the afternoon to get the car in working order again, and without Furiosa Max is sure he’d have been stranded. They work around each other fluidly, don’t even have to say a word until Furiosa finally pulls herself out from under the hood and tosses a wrench down on the sand.

“This’ll run, but the belts won’t hold through another storm. We’ve got just enough guzzoline to get to the Citadel.”

It’s not a suggestion. She’s resigned, pragmatic. Max nods because what choice do they have, but he’s curious to see what’s become of the place, worried about what it might do to her to go back.

Furiosa turns the car on, its engine sounding honestly better than it has in a while. She drives a few yards, then stops and gets out, offering him the first turn at the wheel. Max nods and heads toward her, throwing the tools and supplies they were using into the back seat. As he steps past Furiosa to get in, she brushes into his space and grabs a fistful of his shirt, pulling him close for a kiss. Her lips part against his and Max cradles her face in his hands. She gasps into the kiss and he presses her up against the side of the car, his body angled along hers with an instinct he hasn’t felt in living memory.

As Max’s hands drop from her face to her hips, she leans back abruptly. Furiosa’s brow is furrowed seriously, perhaps regretfully, as she presses her hand flat against his chest. “I can’t risk it,” she says. Max steps back without protest.

His heart is racing when she turns quickly away, and he grins at her back as she rounds the car. Once they’re set he guns the engine, wind rushing in at them, lets the desert become a road beneath his wheels.

 

*

 

Crows have always been good at warning Max about what’s coming. The minute he stops the car there’s a cacophony all around them.

Furiosa jerks to alertness from a sound sleep. They had agreed to switch off driving and push through the night now that they’re down to one vehicle, but as one they arm themselves and open their doors cautiously.

Except for the swells of sand dunes, the landscape here is empty, uninterrupted. The birds don’t belong but they’re excited about something a little way off. Furiosa takes the lead, Max behind her, as they creep over the dune. Anyone there will have heard them coming, but they’ll take what surprise they can get.

A crow cries out like a baby, and maybe it is a baby, and a voice like Sprog’s screams out, “Papa!”

Max tries to stay focused, training his eyes along the horizon behind them, checking for glints or glimmers.

“Max,” Furiosa breathes ahead of him, and drops her rifle to her side.

A man’s dead body is pinned by a rolled truck, a few crows investigating. In the shadow of the truck, a young girl is cradling a baby in one arm, a pistol outstretched in her other hand. Max blinks hard, trying to make the blue of her eyes fade away. It doesn’t.

“Put down your gun,” Furiosa murmurs, and it’s for him, not the girl. He does as she says.

“Stop or I’ll shoot!” the girl shrieks. They’re a few yards away. Max is willing to bet her aim would be good enough.

Furiosa stands her ground, watching them. “We’re not going to hurt you,” she says firmly. “Do you need some help with your truck?”

The girl doesn’t answer but the baby starts to cry. A hungry cry, Max thinks automatically. He looks to Furiosa. “We have a little Mother’s Milk back at our car,” he calls out. “It’s yours if you want it.”

The girl looks panicked at that, relief warring with fierceness. She doesn’t look more than nine years old and all he can hope is that it’s not her own child.

“My name is Furiosa,” Furiosa says over the baby’s wails, and before she can say anything more the girl’s arm drops, her gun falling to the sand as she lets out an exhausted sob. Furiosa presses her own weapon into Max’s hand and slips down the dune to the children. The girls clings to her, the baby between them, and when Furiosa raises her eyes to where Max is standing frozen, there’s a pain he knows well on her face. He goes back for the Milk.

 

*

 

Once the children are settled, the girl feeding her brother, Furiosa quietly fills him in. A family of Wretched from one of the outlying towns, their mother was a half-life and died when the baby came. After word of the battle on the Fury Road reached them, and the story of Furiosa herself, their father stole a truck and they set out for the Citadel. They’d been caught in the sandstorm.

Furiosa is terse and calm as she tells him, but at the end she trails off, holding back.

“What?” Max asks.

She fixes her eyes on the baby. He’s just a few months old. Besides the rags that wrap him, he’s wearing one tiny shoe and Max refuses to remember why that makes him want to scream with grief. “My breasts,” Furiosa finally says.

Max blinks at her.

“When he cries, my body—remembers nursing.”

He has no idea what to say, doesn’t have to when she walks back over the dunes to scavenge what she can from the truck and probably from the body of the children’s father.

“What are you called?” Max asks, crouching beside the kids. “I’m—I’m Max.”

“Honor,” the girl says warily. She focuses on her brother, letting him suck some of the Mother’s Milk from her fingers. He’s fragile in her arms, but doesn’t have any obvious deformities. Maybe a full-life if they make it to the Citadel. “This is Grit.”

Grit fusses in her arms and Max reaches out without thinking. “Let me try?”

Furiosa must have convinced the girl they’re harmless, or her myth has already reached far enough for everyone to believe her people won’t hurt children. Honor hands him the baby and the Milk. Grit fits neatly into the curve of Max’s arm and he wipes his fingers clean as best he can before offering the infant a drop of Milk to suck on. The baby stares up at him, calming as they blink at each other. Max offers him more. The blue of Grit’s eyes stirs his most closely-held memories.

It’s a not a world for children, but Max will get these two to the Citadel. When the baby’s eyes fall closed and Max looks up again, he finds Furiosa watching them. She nods agreement.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to everyone who's been reading and leaving kudos and comments! This world has taken over all my creative energies at the moment and I'm so glad you're all excited about the same sandbox :)


	8. Chapter 8

Darkness falls urgently this time of year, and Furiosa surveys the situation before announcing to Max and Honor that they’ll bury the children’s father in the morning and then head for the Citadel. The girl is so relieved she slumps down in exhaustion by the fire Max has built, her chin resting against her chest.

Furiosa stays in motion as Max sits with the children, her gaze avoiding both Grit and Honor. The girl’s long dark hair is tangled and matted around her face, and with a lurch Max thinks that she looks a bit like Valkyrie.

“Here,” Furiosa finally says, passing what amounts to plates to him and Honor. Max nestles the sleeping baby into the sand and tucks into his food.

Honor eats like she’s starving, pinching up bean paste and licking every bit of the salt and moisture from her fingers. Only when she’s finished does she turn to Furiosa. “What happened to your arm?”

“Lost it in battle,” Furiosa answers without looking up from her food.

“Did you kill a lot of people?” Honor is curious but also demanding.

Furiosa sits up straight and holds her eyes. “I survived. Yes.”

Honor offers a slow nod, assessing her potential saviors. “Is you his wife?”

“No.” The look on Furiosa’s face says the speed of her answer is a surprise to her as much as Max. “No,” she repeats.

In a second of vertigo Max remembers a white dress and the weight of a ring.

“Back where we lived they said the Citadel sent people to take wives.” The girl is testing them, watching them.

“We don’t steal or own anyone,” Furiosa answers, setting down her plate and resting her arms on her knees, metal and flesh hands folded together. “If you’d rather go back where you’re from we can help you get there, but at the Citadel you’ll have a home if you’re willing to help out and find your way.”

Honor tilts her chin up and Max wonders if she’s really much more than nine as she evaluates what Furiosa has said. “Okay,” she answers.

 

*

 

The children bed down in the back seat of Max’s car, and Furiosa leads Max a little distance away, up to the ridge of the dune where they can see the dim outlines of the car and the ruined truck on either side.

It’s different than the other nights of their journey. Setting up camp night after night, Max began to relax in a way he hasn’t in years because she was at his back, had the view over his shoulder. He hopes he has offered her the intimacy of safety in return. Tonight, though.

Max snorts, and catches Furiosa’s alert glance. He shakes his head that nothing’s wrong. But tonight he’s been tense, aware of her every step, even now conscious of her elbow only inches from his as they settle on the sand. Part of him resents the violation of their silent solidarity. The rest of him yearns.

“I lied to her,” Furiosa says without preamble.

Max waits.

“Unless there’s something in her blood or her mind’s not all there, she’s a full-life. They may not care if she calls herself a wife, but she’ll be expected to bear children when she’s old enough.” The bitterness on the tip of her tongue is as strong as their first night on the sands.

“They wouldn’t force you,” he says, but it’s a question. He knows the lengths civilization has been driven to.

“Do you honestly doubt they’ll try to make you?”

There’s scorn in her voice, but the question catches him off guard. Something twists in Max’s gut at the thought of another cage, another piece of himself demanded against his will. He knew why she left but now he feels it.

“Their father,” he starts. The man’s body lies somewhere nearby in the darkness. “He died trying to make their lives better.”

“He’s just lucky we found them before they starved to death in the desert.” Her voice is low and hard.

“And who can help them better than us?”

Furiosa looks at him and only then does Max realize his words sounded like a proposition.

“Not—together,” he mutters.

She reaches out slowly and lays her hand on his good knee. It’s the first time she’s touched him since their kiss after the storm, and Max feels his breath speed up. “I never asked you if you want to go back,” she says.

It’s an invitation to stay out here in the sand, drop them off and drive away. He shakes his head before he understands why. It’s not that he wants people, or has faith in civilization, or will have any regrets if he never sees the Citadel again. It’s that the thought of being without her is like sacrificing a limb, and the chance to stay together is the closest he’s come to hope since Jessie died.

“I’m with you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All the apologies for the delay on this, guys! My work-life balance has been rather unbalanced lately and leaves me with just enough mental energy to make A Softer Fury Road for tumblr and curl up in a ball. Another chapter soon, I promise!


	9. Chapter 9

The revving of an engine in the distance has Max on his feet in an instant, Grit wailing in his arms at the disruption in breakfast.

Furiosa hurtles to the top of the dune, binoculars in hand, and returns swearing. “They’re coming after the truck your father stole,” she says in Honor’s direction. “Three pursuit vehicles, one with lancers.” Even as she speaks they’re getting the few things they need into the car, children in the back as low as they can get and Grit still screaming.

Honor is wide-eyed with terror. “Don’t let them get me,” Honor begs. “Please!”

Furiosa freezes long enough to look at her, sympathy lining her face. “Stay down.”

Max catches the shotgun Furiosa throws to him, and slams his way into the car as she nods for him to drive. Fear for the children tempers his bloodlust, but another part of him is feral, flushed with adrenaline and eagerness to fight at her side.

They take off, maintaining what distance they can and waiting to see if the war party goes to salvage the truck instead of following. With the windshield gone, the wind rushes in and stings his eyes, but Max drives for all he’s worth. In the mirror he sees the pursuit vehicles swerve around the wreck and chase after them.

Furiosa kneels up on the passenger seat as she shoots out the back window with a precision shot that sends one of the cars whirling off course, driver or engine dead.

Adrenaline is crawling up his brain stem and Max’s hands are fixed to the wheel. Honor is wailing his name. It has to be Honor.

The burst of Furiosa’s gunfire booms through the car. Two shots, three, and she stops to raise her binoculars. “Last car is turning back,” she informs him.

Leaving them with a functioning vehicle is a calculated risk, they both know it, but it’s one they’re going to have to take. Max isn’t heading back into a fight with two children in the backseat unless he has no other choice.

Out of the corner of his eye, Max sees Furiosa looks down, her face falling. A glance over his shoulder shows him Honor, trembling so hard her teeth are chattering. Grit is crying as much from how tightly she’s holding him as anything else.

“I can’t go back,” Honor pleads. “Please don’t let them—”

“We won’t,” Furiosa interrupts. “We won’t.” She hesitates, then sets the gun on her seat where Max can reach it and climbs over the console into the back. Honor is on her in an instant, pushing Grit into Furiosa’s arms and clinging to her waist. In the mirror Furiosa looks panicked, but then she settles Grit against her shoulder and strokes Honor’s hair with her flesh hand. The children’s sobs fade to whimpers beneath the roar of air through the car, and as they drive Max lets the wind and the road fill his thoughts.

 

*

 

When they stop to change drivers, Honor resists letting Furiosa go.

Max’s hand stills on his door handle as he hears Furiosa ask, “what is it?” She waits, as patient as she is with him. They both know even children can have secrets too dark to tell.

Honor kneels up on the back seat, resting her chin on her arms as she stares out what used to be the back window. “That man wasn’t my father. He was taking me, like the truck. He thought—he’d heard of what you did, on the Fury Road. He thought you’d trade water for me, to protect me from what he’d do, and if you wouldn’t—” She cuts off with a breathy sob, and Furiosa lays the sleeping baby on the seat so she can take Honor’s shoulders in her hands and turn the girl to meet her eyes.

“Is your family back there? We can find a way to get you home.”

Honor’s face scrunches up, but then she takes a shaky breath. “My mother died, that part was true. That was all the family we had. They were going to sell me to pay her debts.”

Furiosa nods and lowers her hands, letting the girl hug her and finally wrapping her arms around Honor’s thin body in return. “You’ll have a home where we’re taking you,” she promises. Max grunts his agreement and Furiosa meets his eyes. There’s hopelessness in her gaze to match the fierceness in her voice, and he thinks of her words last night.

“You’ll be alright,” he says from the front, and means it.

 

*

 

Six hours later they reach the peak of a mountain and Max watches Furiosa’s face as the Citadel appears in the distance. The softening around her eyes tells him everything. He saw her happy once, for three minutes, and then watched it break her when home turned out to be a long lost dream. It was the moment he first knew her, as she crashed upon the sand, screaming with the same insanity that has driven him all these years. To know that your home once existed and has been torn from you forever, never to be rebuilt or replaced—he thought he’d given up on ever living a real life with that knowledge. Yet here they are, because he followed her across the salt flats, and Furiosa’s expression is a pale but present echo of that other homecoming.

“Why did you leave?” she asks, low enough not to wake the children.

Max blinks out at the horizon. The Citadel grows against the sky, already greener than he remembers. There was nothing else he could have done, but it’s been a long time since he’s searched for the words for why. “It’s what I’ve always done,” he finally says. “Never…never found anywhere…” When he looks to her, Furiosa nods.

He tries. “Me and Jessie had a house, a little cottage on the beach. Art on the walls, Sprog’s toys everywhere.” Sometimes it feels like a dream; other times it’s so real he could reach out and touch it. “After they were killed, I never went back. Couldn’t. Might still be untouched, everything where we left it.”

She hums gently under her breath, calling out the hope in his words that the desert still hasn’t killed. Furiosa isn’t the only one to cling to the idea of home, though he’s been more a fool to do so. He’s always been heading away and back at once, an endless journey.

On the horizon a mirror flashes them a message, and Furiosa leans forward over the steering column, squinting to make it out. When she sits back she’s smiling again. “The Citadel is still ours,” she says, and then turns to him, catching herself.

“Ours,” Max repeats. It’s a word like together, like redemption.

They’ll be there soon.


	10. Chapter 10

Toast and three War Boys bike out to meet them, and Furiosa’s expression flips from the pleasure of homecoming to an absolute blank as she slams her way out of the car. Toast doesn’t allow that for long, holstering her gun and hurling herself at Furiosa for a hug.

“Who’s that?” Honor demands from the back seat. When Max looks back her eyes are full of amazement at the spectacle of the Citadel before them: one pipe has been left running, water falling down into a cistern.

“Toast,” he grunts.

Furiosa gets back in the car with her lips pressed into a fine line, and she doesn’t answer any of Honor’s other questions until the girl falls silent. Max doesn’t ask. Toast rides ahead as the men follow them into one of the garages, and Max suppresses an uneasy shiver of memory – _trapped! caged_ – as he tries to focus on taking the place in. By the time they’ve parked, Capable and Dag are waiting for them with a woman he doesn’t recognize.

“Furiosa!” Dag bursts as they get out of the car. The anxiety Furiosa’s been containing is written all over the younger woman’s face. “Max!” At least him she greets without fear. Max nods and lets her approach Furiosa first as he opens the back door to let the children out. Grit is awake and cooing in his sister’s arms.

“Well, now!” says the unknown woman brightly, stepping up to his elbow. “Where are you two from? Toast passed the message that you had a little one with you who might need me.”

Honor shrinks back in awe, and Max tries not to smile. The woman is his height and rich with fat, probably the largest person Honor has ever seen.

“You can call me Jules,” the woman says kindly. “Would you let me hold your--?”

She looks to Max to finish the sentence and he fills in, “Brother. This is Honor, and Grit. We found them stranded. They’ll—Furiosa meant them to stay here.”

“Of course.” Smiling creases Jules’s cheeks in a way Max finds mesmerizing. She holds a hand out to Honor as the baby starts to cry from being held too tightly. “My job here is to make milk,” she explains. “It sounds like Grit would like to eat.”

He jerks as he processes that. _Mother’s Milk_ , they told him on the road. If pigs could power a town, he’d thought maybe cows could still feed one, but no, this was what they’d meant. Honor looks to him in hesitation, and when Max nods she hands her brother up. Jules smiles at her again as she pulls back a dirty piece of cloth draped over her breasts and offers the infant a nipple. He latches on in a moment and Max stares, memory roiling in his gut.

“Hey,” Furiosa says beside him, and Max turns in relief. “Honor, you and Grit can go up with Jules, she and the Mothers can help you get settled. Just ask for us if you need us.” She gasps as the girl suddenly flings herself forward for a hug, but nearly smiles as she strokes Honor’s hair.

First Toast and now Honor, Max thinks. For all the darkness she’s lived through, Furiosa still belongs among people.

“You come too?” Honor begs, words muffled against Furiosa’s belts in case she says no.

But Furiosa nods, and Capable steps forward. “Max, I can take you in while they get the children settled.”

He turns to Furiosa for something, approval or permission, but she’s already leaving with Jules and Honor. Max grimaces, waiting for Capable’s anger. Instead she’s smiling at him. He’s glad none of them dare reach out for a hug, but he might have allowed it if they tried. Behind her, Dag is grinning, too. Then she arches an eyebrow at him suggestively and his stomach drops.

This was what Furiosa meant last night on the dunes. They think his presence here promises more babies, that he’s Furiosa’s apology to them for running away.

His panic unleashes itself as rage. “What were you thinking, telling her she should have a baby?” Max snaps.

Dag flinches sharply backward, eyes instantly full of tears, and Capable shoots a look around at the War Boys and Blackthumbs attending to the car. “This way,” she hisses, and gives him a dirty look before heading for a staircase.

The dark rectangle of the entrance against the rock makes his heart spasm in his chest, and Furiosa is already gone when he turns. He clenches his fists tight and follows. These aren’t the hallways he ran through, he tries to insist, there weren’t any stairs. He was much higher up, high enough to fall. His vision stays clear but Max’s pulse won’t stop racing.

Capable doesn’t say anything until the stairs have doubled back a few times and released them into a wide but low hallway. Then she stops suddenly and he nearly stumbles into her. Capable waits while he recovers, one hand tugging at the collar of her shirt while the other wraps nervously across her body.

“We didn’t mean to make her run away,” she says. “You’d never think—we never thought there was anything that would make her react like that. The situations we’ve been in with Furiosa—”

Max nods firmly.

Capable drops her hands to her sides, her fists still clenched but her posture straight. “We’ve set up a Council. There’s an issue of healthy population. It might have been _his_ fault so many babies came damaged before, but if we don’t at least try the half-lives will all be dead in ten years and the rest of us won’t be enough to keep the Citadel strong.”

There’s reason to it, but Max shakes his head once, like a mule refusing to be led. “Won’t work unless they want it.”

A pained smile twists her mouth. “I know.”

He wonders what she’s tried, but Capable doesn’t meet his eyes. Stepping back to the side of the hall, she gestures to a door. “She said to bring you. The baths.”

It’s hard to remember what the word means until he sees it. A year of water, a lifetime of water. Capable is laughing but he doesn’t turn to find out why.

 _Water_.

 


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, the rating is going up! Take note. It may yet rise again...

The bathing room offers a few shelves stocked with ragged towels and a powder that must be soap, and then within a dozen feet the floor gives way, the rock receding down into a pool whose bottom Max can’t make out in the dim light.

Capable is gone with a soft laugh at his expression, and Max scopes out the hallway one more time for signs of strangers before he eagerly sheds his layers. Coat first, guns wrapped inside away from splashes. Boots, with another wary glance at the door. His leg brace, propped against the wall. Then the rest, though a shiver in his gut reminds Max that the last time he was naked was also in this place, his body inspected for imperfections and abnormalities.

Slipping into the water washes all of that away. It comes up to his waist but Max sinks down, all of him wet at the same time, and it is the most glorious sensation he knows.  He emerges long enough to take great gulps of water, laughing with the sheer improbability of having a pool to himself in the middle of the desert. For long minutes he swims back and forth, muscles remembering something he won’t let his conscious mind touch. The room is only a few strokes end to end, but it’s wonderful.

Then the soap calls, and the smaller rags he notices now for washing. They’re coarse but that’s good; years of grime scape away as he works, first at his feet which are the worst of it and then slowly up his legs. His knee was never properly treated and scar tissue curls wildly around the joint. Still, the water takes pressure off it even better than lying down.

The water has his whole focus, every bead of it on the back of his hand or runnel sliding down his cheek when he rises from rinsing. If anyone but her had entered, Max has to believe his ghosts would have warned him. But Furiosa is already in the water before a faint sound of splashing makes him turn.

She grins with pride to have given him this gift. The water laps around her collarbones and Max turns away again to let her have her privacy as she bathes. He works on his hair next, diving under the surface to rinse the suds and catching a glimmer of her pale body through the dimness. He swam beneath waves like this once, a hand on his slippery leg – racing with Goose? Was that blur up ahead Jessie? Was Sprog in her arms? Glory’s face bobs beneath the surface, warning him to breathe. Tender or terrifying, the vision could drown him.

Max emerges shuddering. He’s back in the Citadel. With a slow breath he settles, his mind returning to the present moment as he scrubs another handful of the sandy soap into his arm. He wonders if anyone has apologized to Furiosa yet, if they’d even dare to. Gruffly, he begins, “Capable says they’d never have made you have a child.”

The water goes still as Furiosa stops moving. “I know.”

Yet her eyes were so wild, that night he first found her. “Then why leave?”

Her breath comes out in a soft sigh, and her words are slow. “Choosing is a luxury we have rarely had in this place, and when we did have it the choice had to be made in an instant. Miss Giddy told me they were coming to take my child and I didn’t even stop to kiss her before—”

She’s silent for a long time and finally Max turns to see her. Furiosa is staring down into the water, at her own watery memories. Just beneath the surface of the pool he can see the faint lines left by pregnancy on her stomach. He held Sprog’s lifeless body the entire way to the hospital in the ambulance with Jessie.

“They asked me and they waited, and nothing kicked in,” she says. “I didn’t know what the answer was. They would have accepted whatever I gave them. But I couldn’t. But I could just go.” Her eyes lift to his in wonder. A thousand kinds of freedom, not only the ones they were trying to claim.

“And now?”

Furiosa shakes her head, but it isn’t an answer. “Here,” she offers. “I’ll do your back, then I need you to wash my arm.”

Snatching up another rag, she waits for him to turn and present his back. The nub of her amputated arm rests on his shoulder and Furiosa’s other hand goes to work, scrubbing away at the healed and peeling skin of his back. It itched so terribly in those days after he first left but he could never reach, and now the relief of the rough cloth is so pure that Max groans in pleasure.

She hesitates, then continues, hooking herself closer as she washes his shoulder blade so that her breasts brush against the sensitized skin of his back. Her breath tickles at the back of his neck as rivulets trickle out of his hair and Max is hard beneath the water. He feels her lean closer, her tongue lapping at the drops for a silky instant.

Max pulls free to turn and see her. Furiosa watches him steadily. “Soap,” he grunts. While he goes back to the lip of the bath to retrieve more for her arm, she ducks under the water to swim a few laps and he faces away from her, washes quickly at his groin. His arousal recedes until he turns with the soap and she’s standing there, shy and willing all at once.

“Max,” Furiosa says.

He bathes her as she’d asked, rubbing the soap into the shoulder and armpit and elbow she’d never be able to reach on her own. His knuckles brush the side of her breast and he feels her whole body shiver. The scars on her ribs are still faintly red: on her right side from the knife that nearly killed her, on her left side from his own.

Gently he washes her hand, currying away the grime and dirt from her nails, lacing his fingers through hers. The mark where a bolt pierced his hand is mostly healed, and lucky, or she might not be the only one missing an arm. When he begins to release Furiosa, she catches at his wrist and studies the scar. It’s the least of their wounds, their marks, the histories of violence and ownership written on their skin. When she presses her lips to the palm of his hand Max gasps raggedly.

“We don’t have to—” he breathes, but he isn’t sure. They don’t have to have any kind of sex that might get her pregnant is she isn’t ready for that, but they have to do something. He can see it in the darkness of her eyes, feels it in the long muscles of his thighs.

“Alright! Let’s get you two clean!” a voice from the hall interrupts, and Honor appears around the doorway, grinning in delight.

Furiosa releases him, climbing some stairs he didn’t notice and reaching for a towel as she directs the girl to undress and nods to Jules and Grit. Max focuses on the murky skin of the pool, willing his body to relax. Only when Furiosa is mostly dressed and Jules has towed the children to a further corner of the water does he emerge and quickly dry himself.

“We’ll get you some cleaner things,” Furiosa says once he has his pants on. “Come on.” She looks back uncertainly for just a moment, as if there is any question about him following her. When she finds him only an inch away, she nods, and this time Max is almost sure it’s a choice.

 


	12. Chapter 12

As soon as he’s been outfitted with a clean set of clothes, it’s time for the evening meal, and Max ends up halfway down one of the long tables from Furiosa as the Sisters and Mothers and War Boys swarm to confirm for themselves that she’s back. They’re in awe of her, but it’s a culture of proximity and the children reach out for hugs, the women for the forehead touch of the Vuvalini. The War Boys are rougher in their respect, clasping forearms and slapping shoulders. For weeks or months he watched them from his cage, and so he knows how different this is from what came before, how much it means to all of them.

To his relief the strangers sitting nearby haven’t recognized him as the man who returned with Furiosa and the other women. It’s for the best; already his skin is crawling with the sheer number of people around him, dozens always at his back. There’s a smell in the air that he can’t name but knows well, like the taste of the iron bars of a cage and the bite of rope into his wrists.

The twitching and jumping is starting to escape his control when Furiosa looks over at him, in the middle of a laugh at something one of the Milk Mothers has said, and she’s at his side in an instant with a gruff, “let’s get out of here.”

Max shoves the last of the coarse bread in his mouth and follows her out, into the relative cool and quiet of the corridor. He shudders anyway, the rock closing in around him, trapping him again.

“Do you want to see it?” she asks, the words low in her throat. “See that it’s gone.”

No. He doesn’t, but in the meantime it’s lurking around every corner. He’s lost in a maze and the center might be a haven or a cage. Max grunts an answer and follows her.

“Organic kept records,” Furiosa says over her shoulder. “You were here for sixty-five days.” Her voice is entirely emotionless. He doesn’t know if the length of time is impressively long or would have been only the beginning. The smell of metal and blood creeps at the edge of consciousness and his nostrils flare.

“Almost there,” she murmurs. “Ready?” They step through the doorway before he can answer.

The cavern is unrecognizable. On the ground level there are cubicles, some carved into the rock and others cordoned off, sleeping quarters from what he can see. Above, the dangling cages are full of plants, vines growing up the chains toward the light even as tubes still threaded through the chains offer periodic irrigation. The tower of V8 is gone, tools and wheels now objects, not idols. The air is still rich with the smell of sweat from the sheer volume of people, but it’s the sweat of hard work and hot sun in place of terror and adrenaline. It fills Max’s lungs and drains out again, taking some of the crazy with it.

“You won’t sleep here,” Furiosa says beside him, “but I wanted you to know.”

He won’t find himself here ever again in the dark of the night. It is a staggering relief.

“Come on,” she says. Max follows as she turns back out of the room.

They go up higher, climbing stairs and hiking up steep corridors. At last they emerge into a room that’s flooded with moonlight at one end: the mouth of the Citadel. Furiosa doesn’t stop to look out, drawing him further through rooms of greenery and then to a giant round door in the rock. It hangs open a few feet, a crowbar stuck through the hinges so it can’t close.

She averts her face from the door as Max comes up beside her, his shoulder brushing hers. Her mouth is a grim line. He understands. This was her cage.

Furiosa steps over the threshold first and stops short with a gasp that threatens to become a wail as she turns back to reach for him.

There are words scrawled across the floor, above the door, stark white in the dimness. When he reaches her and follows Furiosa’s gaze he understands. _WHO KILLED THE WORLD?_

Max catches her good hand, holding on. The child she brought here singing in her cab, the girl her own daughter’s age, the woman who went under the wheels of Furiosa’s rig and lay bleeding on the sand: this is her question. Right here in the room where Furiosa took her baby’s life.

Her face is wild and lost, and he knows she hasn’t been back here through all their days of rebuilding the Citadel.

“We can save the world,” Max says, and the words echo far too loudly for his liking. Furiosa is already holding his hand this time. “If you want to try.”

Her eyes are full of tears as she presses closer, into his arms. They stand together, wrapped as tightly as they can bear. Her hair smells soapy and clean, and that more than anything gives Max something to hold onto. The desert has scoured them down to this, every nerve laid raw. What they’ve found underneath is not who they used to be, but it’s real and true.

 

*

 

After a long while the stars come out on the other side of the glass, and Max and Furiosa make their way back out of the Vault.

When she speaks Furiosa’s voice is hoarse. “The Dag said—they didn’t give my room to someone else.”

“Waiting for you.”

Her jaw clenches. “It’s a risk, relying on other people like that. Believing you know what they’ll do.”

They’re not touching now, but he feels her tension. She draws something out of a pocket. “One of the Mothers gave me this.” It’s a brown paper packet, some kind of leaves crinkling its surface.

Max raises an eyebrow.

“It’s a choice,” she says.

“I can’t have a child,” Max says before he thinks, heart racing. “Not again. Not—not now.”

She smiles at him, happy and sad at the same time. “Me too.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am so, so sorry for the delay on this, real life has been thoroughly exhausting lately. All of you here and on tumblr are my favorite though, and have kept me somewhat sane with your stories and art! Hoping to post more soon :) ~E


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Earning the rating for this one! It doesn't quite warrant an 'E' in my mind, but let me know if you disagree ;) TW for vague references to past rape.

Furiosa slows as she reaches a door, and Max knows she means for him to stay with her tonight. What else she might want, he’s not certain. The length of the day is slowing his steps, a day that began with a firefight and ended with the places of their nightmares real enough to touch. Except she turns in the doorway and meets his eyes, her own clear and affectionate and willing as she was earlier in the baths. “Here,” she says softly, and lets him in.

“That’s for tomorrow.” Furiosa sets the packet of leaves on the small table across from her bed.

His whole body wakes at her words. If the tea is for tomorrow, then tonight is for them. It has been more days than he can count since he’s been with someone, since he’s even looked past survival long enough to consider sex. Max closes his eyes at a rush of memories: Jessie on the beach, wrapped in a white sheet and laughing. His first time with Jessie, both of them were seventeen, a few experiences behind them but still figuring things out. It feels like another lifetime.

Long fingers stroke his cheek. It’s Furiosa, right there with him, searching to see if he’s sure too. Max finds he is. He leans into her touch, takes her hand in his and presses a kiss to her wrist. She hums, surprised and pleased.

There are many questions he’ll never ask her because he knows his own aversion to stirring up old pain, days better left forgotten. And yet with all he knows -- _They left me alone until I bled. Then I had a girl._ –some answers lie between them and whatever happens next.

As Furiosa pulls back and reaches for the belts that hold her arm in place, he stutters it out, paring the question down to three words and knowing she’ll read the rest in his face. “Have you ever--?”

She understands. She shakes her head once, or is perhaps shaking the last belt free.  “Not for the sake of it. But I know my own body.”

Max reaches for her before she can undress further, his hands cupping her ribs where he knows the scars she bears. Furiosa leans forward, forehead to forehead with him.

“Max,” she whispers, and he kisses her.

The pleasure of it overwhelms him, sinking him down into a world no bigger than the two of them. There’s nothing left but Furiosa’s sighs, her delighted surprise and sudden hunger as he claims her mouth, rains kisses down her throat, lets his hands venture further to tug her against him in all the right ways. His body trembles at her eagerness as they pull away each other’s clothes and fall onto her bed. He saw her nakedness earlier, but now she offers it up to him, and in turn he lets her run her fingers down the scars that crisscross his leg and over the tattoos on his back. She presses her lips to his palm again, then holds it to her breast and pulls him down to kiss her.

He touches her as she’s guided him to, then ventures lower, telegraphing his intentions and watching her face as his fingers find the slickness of her center. Furiosa arches against him, her nails digging into his shoulders, and he kisses her again, as breathless as she is as, as hungry for more.

Except then, just as he’s trying to sort out what the next stage should be, wondering whether he should use his mouth or if she’d rather be on top, Furiosa rolls away from him.

She rises to her hands and knees on the bed, leaning forward to present herself to him. A shiver ripples through the muscles of her back as she rests awkwardly on her elbow and nub. “Had two arms last time,” she mutters.

Her body is taut, but she’s with him. She’s not alone in her nervousness. Max has ignored his own need, trying to focus on hers, but he’s throbbing with wanting her, far beyond ready. He reaches between them to stroke her heat, runs his other hand up her spine to the back of her neck.

Furiosa goes deathly still as his fingers brush over her brand, rigid not with nerves but with barely controlled fear and the promise of violence. Max releases her, scrambling to the side as he urges her to face him, only a hand loose on her waist to keep their connection.

He waits. Her eyes are closed but she draws long breaths until the quivering of her jaw eases.

“Another night,” Max says, his voice rumbling and low.

Furiosa looks at him, clarity summoned back more quickly than he’s ever managed to do. “Will you trust me more next week than you do right now?”

He snorts at the thought that he could trust her more, and takes her meaning.

“Then touch me,” she says, resting her hand on his chest.

Max hums agreement but moves slowly, his hand on her waist guiding her onto her back. For a long time he just kisses her, running his fingers over her scars as if to prove they’re healed. When Furiosa curls a leg up around his waist to bring them closer he catches at her shoulder for a moment, murmuring, “slowly.” She purses her lips defiantly, but then she must see that he needs it this way, too.

When he slides into her, Furiosa smiles against his throat and gasps in what can only be pleasure, and that’s all Max needs to lose himself, their bodies moving together with the same innate familiarity that lets them fight side by side in flawless precision. He’s filled with joy so intense it doesn’t belong to this broken world, and how long has it been since anyone knew his name, let alone murmured it to him, whimpering breathlessly like this— _Max, Max!_ Her climax spurs on his own and there’s nothing left but the two of them together.

For long minutes afterward, they lie entwined, breathing each other’s breath, undone by intimacy. Furiosa pulls away first, slipping off the bed and reaching for her clothes. She looks up at him as she bends to put on a boot. “I’ll come back,” she says, and then she’s out the door and he’s alone.

 


	14. Chapter 14

Max wakes alone. The sky outside the narrow window is still full dark, but he feels rested enough that Furiosa has been gone a long while. She’ll come back, she said she would, and he relies on that. Still, every other time she’s run away she’s allowed him to find her. Max swings his legs out of bed and reaches for his clothes.

He grins as he dresses: there are marks from her mouth and nails on his skin, a history of their own making.

The room opens off a long hallway with a half dozen doors on each side; at the far end is some kind of open chamber where a candle or lantern is sending shadows dancing up and down the floor. Max heads toward it and blinks in surprise at the sight of young Cheedo bouncing Grit in her arms, singing something under her breath as he coos, wide awake.

Max clears his throat but still startles her.

Cheedo clutches the baby close, studying him warily. “Are you leaving again?”

He snorts, holding back a smile at her determination to protect Furiosa. “She went. Out. Just looking for her. You’re tending him?”

Cheedo nods. “Honor’s sharing my room since I’m only a thousand days older. She wouldn’t leave him to sleep anywhere else, but she needed to rest so I took him out for a bit.”

There’s a feather in her hair, Vuvalini beads around her neck, but suddenly even with a baby in her arms Max can’t see her as an adult. In the world they killed she’d still be in school uniforms and pigtails. He shakes the image roughly away.

She purses her lips together, shifting Grit higher on her shoulder, then asks, “You didn’t hurt her, did you? I could…hear. Joe would always hurt the others.”

He doesn’t dare ask, but his eyes do.

“I’m still too young to breed.” She pauses, frowning. “I was. But the Vuvalini who came back with us said it doesn’t have to hurt, that the two of them have done it for pleasure.”

“Didn’t hurt her,” Max confirms. The baby is watching him and Max steps forward, hefts the boy’s weight out of Cheedo’s arms. A question strikes him, and she’s still alert at his elbow, dangling her beads for Grit to wave his fist at. “The others—thought there was a plan to have babies. What they told her.”

Her eyes are solemn as she plays a gentle tug of war with the baby for her necklace. “The Council was talking about it, about needing to stabilize the population. Some women agreed to try. Two of the milking mothers have gotten pregnant, with men they knew among the Wretched I think, but they didn’t say. Toast and Capable—they need time to heal before they decide. They still have the nightmares.” She looks sideways at him, the back to Grit. “The Mechanic—sometimes I have them, too.”

“Hmm.” He remembers them strong and reliable from the journey, not fearless but still brave, knows too how deeply they all bury their wounds in order to survive. He’s seen all kinds of things in the wasteland, but tonight he’s been torn open by the intimacy of Furiosa’s trust. Determination blooms in his chest.

“Grit?” Honor calls from the doorway.

Max passes the baby back to Cheedo to carry to his sister. Beside them she could almost be part of their family, only half a head taller than Honor, but when she turns to look at him it’s with a woman’s smile. “She’s up on the terraces, probably. Up the stairs there.”

He doesn’t move until she’s taken the children with her back to whichever room they’re sharing. In their absence the room around him comes into focus, lit by the lantern Cheedo left behind. There are books, chairs and tables, instruments underway on a workbench. A chalkboard against one wall has simple words written out by a dozen shaky hands. They don’t need him to bring civilization back, but he carries some of its trappings with him. Lifting a rag from a hook, Max wipes the board clean and reaches for a bit of the chalk. _Where must we go, what must we build there together, we who wander this Wasteland in search of our better selves?_ he writes. An answer to Angharad if she’s lingering here, a promise to the rest of them.

He heads for the stairs.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just another chapter or two to go! Many thanks to all of you who've been commenting - the enthusiasm of this fandom is awesome :D


	15. Chapter 15

Max stops as he emerges onto the terrace, taking stock of the starry night sky and the various crags and cliffs blacking it out in rough shapes. The tower looms behind him and casts him in shadow. He left the lantern just inside so as not to announce his presence to the Wasteland and waits, listening, as his eyes adjust.

A quick step on grass is followed by a hard thunk, the sound of a knife lodging itself in wood or clay. Tracking the sound back, Max finds her. A knife whistles past his ear.

“Fool,” her voice rings out in the night, with the undercurrent of a laugh.

He smiles. The ground is uneven and he makes his way carefully, until the pale shape of her shirt reveals Furiosa from the shadows. Her eyes glint in the moonlight. She hesitates, then shoves the knife she’s holding back into her belt and reaches out to lay her hand on his chest. Her prosthesis is still back in her room, and this is her best tool of defense; Max feels the intimacy like a kiss.

“Alright?” he asks when she doesn’t speak.

Furiosa steps back, nods to a shape against the rock. Max peers closer and then shudders. Someone’s made a scarecrow out of Immortan Joe’s plastic armor and broken breathing apparatus and other spare materials. To his satisfaction it has a number of knife wounds, two hilts still protruding from the head and gut.

“No one has what they had before,” she murmurs. “The things that Miss Giddy and the oldest of the Many Mothers remembered. But he took so much more than that. Cut us off from other people, from ourselves.” The knife from her belt flicks past him to claim Joe’s heart. For all the guilt and regret she carries, this rage is pure.

“You killed him,” Max says.

“Not soon enough.”

“Cheedo was in there, just now. She’ll be—He can never hurt her like the wives.”

She snorts, produces another knife from some pocket and hurls it as hard as she can. “Do you know what a wife was, before?”

The thought catches in his chest, a memory like a wound. Jessie’s hands in his, their families there, a hope too pure for their own age let alone this one.

“Max,” Furiosa says, palm on the back of his head. “I didn’t—I know.”

In the darkness a thousand hands are grabbing at him, pulling him down into the abyss between that place and this one, but her grip on him holds true and solid until he can open his eyes again. The madness doesn’t fit into the same world that she does. Anger, sorrow, love—those will help them fix what’s broken.

“Good,” he mutters. “I’m good.” Max pulls away to let Furiosa exorcise what’s left of her rage, finds a patch of broken weeds where he can settle against the sandstone of the tower and track her progress: the weight of her knives hitting home, long strides to retrieve them again, soft grunts as she jerks them free.

Eventually Max sleeps, and his ghosts rest too.

 


	16. Epilogue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, two chapters just got posted, don't miss chapter 15! :)

Dawn is peeking over the horizon when Max opens his eyes again, the first rays of red and gold alighting on the sand. Furiosa’s head is a warm weight on his right shoulder, her hair soft against his cheek when he turns toward her.

She hums to herself to let him know she’s not asleep, then reaches out for a mug beside her and takes a long swallow. Memory stirs, brings back tea and choices and the pleasure of their bodies together. She meets his eyes with a smile, shy and sure at once, and leans closer to kiss him. His heart races: this moment has never existed before in the long history of a broken world. They’re both flushed when they pull apart again. Furiosa nestles against the rock beside him.

They’ve seen many sunrises in their wanderings, many sunsets over the dunes. This is the first one that has earned the right to be witnessed. The decision to stay here, to be still and together, has taken their entire lives. They’ve made it at last.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well that's all folks! I've enjoyed discovering this story as it unfolded and I hope you have too :)

**Author's Note:**

> (for more fun - and art! - come hang out on tumblr! http://something-thrown-in.tumblr.com/)


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